Print
EmailAttention: Science / Health / Lifestyle Reporters
19th Annual Rotman Research Institute Conference - Cognitive Aging
March 8-10, 2009
The InterContinental Hotel, Toronto
Top scientists meet in Toronto to discuss latest advances in understanding the aging brain
“Cognitive failure is not necessarily inevitable as we age,” says conference co-chair
Toronto, ONT – Brain scientists from around the world are meeting in Toronto next week to share the latest research on how the brain changes as healthy adults enter their middle age and senior years – and how these changes affect behaviours from memory to emotional responding.
Identifying the different factors that influence this process (for example, genetics, stress, nutrition, engaging in mentally challenging activities) will lay the groundwork for developing promising lifestyle interventions, clinical treatments and cognitive rehabilitation strategies to maintain brain health longer in the lifespan.
Cognitive scientists know they’re working against the clock. Canada and the U.S. are bracing for an unprecedented epidemic of age-related brain failure in coming decades as the massive Baby Boomer cohort turns grey. The first wave of Boomers will reach 65 in 2011. While they stand a good chance of living to an older age than that of their parents and grandparents, retaining soundness of mind to enjoy the extra years is not so certain.
More than 350 scientists, students and clinical practitioners from nine countries will attend the 19th Annual Rotman Research Institute Conference for this year’s topic, “Cognitive Aging”. The Sunday workshop (March 8) will focus more on the rehabilitation end. The Monday-Tuesday conference (March 9-10) will concentrate on the basic science of studying age-related brain changes, with a few presentations on rehabilitation initiatives mixed in.
“Cognitive failure is not necessarily inevitable as we age,” says conference co-chair Dr. Fergus Craik, a senior scientist at Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute and pioneer in memory research who co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Memory. “We used to take a very mechanistic view of brain function, but we now know the brain is much more influenced by its environment. This bodes well for the development of future treatments and interventions to slow down cognitive decline as we age.”
"We use a variety of approaches to study cognitive aging to arrive at a richer understanding of cognitive changes with healthy aging," says Dr. Lynn Hasher, a senior scientist at Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute and conference co-chair. Dr. Hasher's research has shown that older adults tend to be larks -- with best cognitive performance in the morning. She has also shown that even though older adults have difficulty with attention regulation (suppressing irrelevant information), there are at least some circumstances in which they can perform a memory task as well as, or even better, than younger adults. This happens when events in the recent past are useful in the present. Older adults are more likely to "sense" this -- and to use the recent past to implicitly boost their performance.
Conference keynote speakers are Dr. Mark D’Esposito (University of California at Berkeley) and Dr. Yaakov Stern (Columbia University, New York). Dr. D’Esposito is world renowned for his exploration of the brain mechanisms that underlie memory function and how they change with normal aging, stroke, traumatic brain injury, and with diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. He will speak on Monday, March 9 at 1:30 p.m. Dr. Stern is one of the leading proponents of “cognitive reserve” theory, which is defined as the ability of an individual to tolerate progressive brain pathology without demonstrating cognitive decline. He will speak on Tuesday, March 10 at 9:20 a.m.
The conference will be held at the InterContinental Hotel, 225 Front St. W., Toronto. For the conference itinerary and list of scientific presenters on March 8-10, go to www.rotman-baycrest.on.ca and click on Rotman Conference.
For more information on this press release, to register for the conference, or request an advance press kit with presenter abstracts, please contact: Kelly Connelly, Senior Media Officer, Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest, (416)-785-2432,
kconnelly@baycrest.org. To reach press officer during conference, please page (416)-612-5494.